


Sword-Bearer - Fanmix Drabbles

by Maybethings



Series: Grey Warden and Short Taarbas [8]
Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Caretaking, Drabble Collection, F/M, Kadanmance, Qunmance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-02 03:28:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 1,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/364475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maybethings/pseuds/Maybethings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p> A series of achronological drabbles, inspired by the sixteen songs on Cherith’s Sword-Bearer fanmix. Takes place during Sword-Bearer’s main timeline.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Circlewinds

**Author's Note:**

> Cherith's Sword-Bearer fanmix can be found [here.](http://cherith.tumblr.com/post/14395692486/sword-bearer-a-fanmix-for-the-wonderful-and)

Natia is afraid. She can’t believe it. There are mere inches of water and air between Seheron and the sea, but this sudden apprehension is a shackle on her feet and a weight in her stomach.

Something makes her turn to the boundless sky. Birds skim the wind, calling to one another in flight. Deep green water washes up and down the rocks, moved by unseen forces, but ever returning to what it was.

She takes the plunge. The Grey Warden steps onto the docks, and doesn’t even flinch when the cold wind stings her cheeks and tousles her hair.


	2. Together We Will Live Forever

“Sten, you’re not at all afraid?” Natia’s voice is high and clear in the dark. The words are easier, somehow, in these invisible hours.

“There is no fear in acceptance, Warden.”

“I really thought there’d be more time.” She chuckles bitterly. “That we’d have—I don’t know. The rest of a life. Forever.”

“It is simply a shorter life,” Sten replies laconically. “Duty endures. Actions endure. They outlive us.”

“Then I’ll remember all you’ve done here, every day. Can’t spar with memories, though,” she quips, and he laughs. Or coughs. She can’t say. But his reaction makes her smile anyway.


	3. No One Knows I'm Gone

The ship for Seheron leaves early, while stars still dot the heavens. The more seasoned travelers look askance at Natia’s ironbound chest. She stares back. In the shadows, she looks like any other surface dwarf, not the Hero of Ferelden. She certainly doesn’t feel like her.

Asala is a foreign weight upon her shoulder, but welcome. She is all that ties the dwarva to the ground.

“That chest is going to take up precious space,” the ship’s captain grumbles.

“Space I’ll pay for with gold,” Natia says as she drags it on board, turning her back on the Fereldan cold.


	4. Hello Night

The night is so quiet that even the wildlife seems to whisper. Crickets, frogs, birdsong: Natia has not heard all these since Ostagar.

Her goal is clear: guard her companion from the Taint as best as she can, and finish what he has started. A plan begins to coalesce in her head. She needs to visit the market in the morning, but for now, she’ll face the night head on. She procures paper, ink and quill, and begins her first letter to the Orlesian Wardens.

Darkness will not claim them both. Not if she has anything to say about it.


	5. I Hope I Stop Fading

He really wishes she hadn’t said _that_. Qunari are not built to love in the way others do; she knows this. When she says she should go, Sten lets her leave.

It is better, this way. Unnecessary attachment brings conflict, and conflict brings struggle. Better that their parting be clean and swift, and that she moves on once he is no more. She must survive—will survive the chaos of the world without him.

Being alone after travelling with companions for so long is difficult, but he is determined to face his fate alone. Love is no part of duty.


	6. Sanvean: I Am Your Shadow

She doesn’t dare write to tell them where she’s gone, all the ones she left behind. Viddathari misses her friends’ company keenly, adrift as she is in the Seheran barracks, but it’s better that they don’t know. Especially Alistair. You can’t torture something out of someone when it’s not there.

That’s what she hopes, at least.

For now, the best she can do is envision them safe and happy, whole of limb and sound of step, travelling a path free of strife and foes. Perhaps one day they will all meet again…hopefully not on opposite sides of the battlefield.


	7. Fighting My Way Back

“What’s all this?” Natia says to the crowd outside Sten’s lodgings. She doesn’t like the furtive way they’re milling around.

One of the men grips a rusty shiv. “We heard,” he says with a great show of bravado, “that there’s a Qunari murderer here.”

“Oh?” she says icily. “It wasn’t a problem when he was fighting darkspawn beside you.”

“He’s dangerous!”

“He’s _sick_!” Natia bristles. “We’ve got two choices. You leave well enough alone, or I throw your corpses down the Chantry well.”

“You w-wouldn’t.”

“Archdemon couldn’t kill me.” She draws. “Can _you_?”

They scatter. She returns to his side.


	8. Keening of The Three Marys

A handful of tea leaves, a cone of incense, and a wood chip. She assembles the impromptu offering and sails it from the dock. The tiny raft floats out with the tide, trailing light, sweet-smelling smoke.

“… _Anaan esaam Qun_ ,” she finishes, resting damp palms on her breeches. She wonders what he might say if he could see her now, a year on. She wonders what she might say to him.

“Viddathari,” a woman calls to her from the lanes above. “It grows dark. Are you well?”

“Yes, tamassran,” she calls back, her voice shaking only a little. “I am well.”


	9. Are Those Bullet Holes?

A darkspawn mace’s ugly bruise, just below one arm. A shriek’s handiwork, deep and slick as any dagger wound. Two punctures from a dragon thrall’s needle-like teeth. The long, jagged ravine left by an archdemon’s claw.

Natia hates them all. She hates the way they will not heal, the grey, dead flesh that spreads from them, and how they will take a comrade from her as surely as it took Orzammar, brick by brick, inch by inch.

She fights them anyway, with poultice and bandage and the occasional futile tear. Sten has accepted his fate—but she doesn’t intend to quit.


	10. I Will Stay

He regains consciousness to find her sitting on the edge of the bed, hands and cheeks smudged with watery grey. When he stirs, so does she, gesturing at him to rest. Relief glows dimly in her tired eyes. “You gave us quite a fright there,” she says with forced cheer.

“Why did you stay?” he asks.

Natia looks away, bashful but irritated. “If you don’t want to hear the answer, you shouldn’t ask, _kadan_.”

Love is no part of duty. It is not duty that keeps her here, but the simple wish to remain with him. No matter the cost.


	11. Take Me Away

“Everyone ready?”

Sten looks to her. A woman, yet a fighter, wielding her two swords with such ease and solemnity nothing could be more fitting. Her face is full of concern for her allies, though her eyes gleam with tension. Low-born, but high-hearted. She is a walking contradiction—and worth following, despite all that. A year ago, he could not imagine uttering what he does now.

“Lead the way, _kadan_.”

She smiles at him warmly. Wherever she came from before, Natia Brosca now leads a nation into war. They charge the Archdemon together, the Warden blazing bright as dragon’s fire.


	12. Made in the Dark

Dwarves are no stranger to darkness, dark times or darkspawn. Natia’s familiar enough with Sten’s floorplan now that she can navigate it surefootedly with lamps unlit, without bumping into anything. If a nightmare disturbs his sleep, she is there. If fever or pain wracks him, she is at his side.

Comfort. Solace. Support. It is all she can give now, and she holds on to him, to these moments, while she still can. Before the dark separates the two for good.

The first night on the ship to Seheron, she stubs her toe on everything in the berth—even under lamplight.


	13. Everything Fades to Gray

“So this is what Grey Wardens dream of. It explains much,” he grits out on the night that the nightmares start.

The visions are hideous and twisted, the sounds even more so. But most disturbing of all is how the Taint’s whisper reverberates within his breast like a lover’s call. It would drive any lesser man mad. As it is, it saps his strength far more efficiently than poison.

Natia asks him what he sees in his sleep. Once. He just shakes his head. She softly lays her hand on his shoulder. She understands some things you just don’t share.


	14. Third Lake

“This the spot?” The captain squints at the dwarf standing beside him.

“This is the spot,” she nods decisively. The water is deep and close to the docks; the wind that blows over them carries myriad exotic scents. She can’t think of a better place.

“And the coin you promised?”

“All yours.” She flips him a small, heavy pouch. He pockets it and helps her heave the iron-bound casket over the rail. The sea swallows it with hardly a splash. He leaves to steer the ship into port. She stays, gazing over the rail.

“ _Shok ebasit hissra_ ,” Natia Brosca begins.


	15. Stand and Feel Your Worth

All viddathari have their tales. It’s just that very strange stories trail a specific dwarf.

Some say the woman was a sellsword, a fugitive from distant Orzammar. She is a Grey Warden. A hero. A traitor. She fought a dragon and won. She has slain Tal-Vashoth. She shared her bed with a kossith. She was once a golem. She never once hints at the truth, never speaks of her life before the Qun.

“ _Parshaara_ ,” she says to the inquisitive with a chuckle, a shrug and a spot-on Seheran accent. “What is gone is gone. What comes after is what matters.”


	16. Iron

Tal-Vashoth are attacking. Tamassran and karagena distribute weapons to those able to fight. No Qunari is left defenseless. At a word from the priest, the karagena passes Viddathari two swords: one etched with blue runes, the other a familiar greatsword.

“Starfang,” she breathes. Hers, once. “But this…it’s not—”

“No other is worthy. Guard it well, little taarbas,” the tamassran says with a ghost of a smile.

Old, familiar heat stirs her blood as she binds Asala to her back. The Tal-Vashoth will feel the wrath of two steel-bound souls today: hers, and the one borne close to her heart.


End file.
